Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between God’s loving discipline unto redemption and God’s wrath unto destruction- difficult, except for faith and trust in the love of our heavenly Father who sent His son to die that we might be made holy. And this the constant theme in all the prayers we pray tonight, an expression of confidence in God’s mercy, while we are crying out lamenting our woeful condition.
Are you ready to go with Him? We set out this Wednesday, as a family we go up together so that we can walk with him to Golgotha as he bears our sin, so that we can stand at the foot of the cross with our Mother and adore the Savior's sacrifice, so that we can meet him with Mary Magdalene at the tomb as he comes out in glorious victory.
Now the takeaway from this parable is simple. There is one good heart and three defective hearts. What makes the three defective hearts defective is not three complex problems but in the final analysis, essentially just one problem. And the good heart is described as possessing the one thing the defective hearts lack. As I said the takeaway is pretty simple, there is one thing we must avoid and if we are to be good there is one thing we must attain. The defection in each case is to lack perseverance and faithfulness and the essence of the good heart is in Jesus words to cling to the word with steadfast endurance. That word cling is katecho means to hold fast with tenacity, to bind it to oneself and possess it.
If you came and said to me, "Father, I have a passion to become a master blacksmith", and I told you that you need to be prepared for five hard years of humiliation and failure before you even begin to see much success, and then you get started, and in the first month you are shocked at how hard it is to do anything resembling skill, you will either give up, or remember what you were told, and perservere. The mystery lies in your own heart as to what you will do, but the warning should steel your resolve to fight on. The same goes for anything worth doing, including marriage, ministry, and being a Christian, in which you are invited to die on a cross.
Do you think Peter understood what awaited him when Jesus said "Follow Me" and Peter followed Him? How about Matthew, Andrew, James and John? Perhaps St. Paul had a slight indication that he wasn't going to club Med when Jesus knocked him off his horse and blinded him but it wasn't till after he said yes that Jesus showed him all the things he must suffer for Christ's sake. Your contract is not a thousand pages to be scrutinized by you and your legal counsel. It consists of one clause- Jesus is Lord, follow Him and do whatever He tells you and you will have eternal life.
It does not really matter what is going on circumstantially- If we know that we are pleasing to God, even if the waves rage, there will be peace within. But if we doubt, if we are in the throws of shame and dubiety, then even the thrill of hitting all the green lights is not going to be satisfying for long. So in times of uncertainty, and in times of ease, we must always be asking ourselves: "What pleases you Lord?" And our joy comes from pleasing Him.
Among all the things John is communicating to us in the story of the wedding at Cana, he is depicting the Woman, the Mother of the Living One in her role as confident and at peace with herself and what she had to do. And she gives a command, not just to the servants, but to us all: "Whatever he tells you, do it"
We want to live, and to live to the fullest, and if we are not pressing on toward that high calling we will never feel contentment. It is no news to us that this is not easy, that there are many distractions, assaults, and offers of Turkish delight to draw us off course. We must be alert, vigilant, watchful, thoughtful, circumspect, prudent, brave, and courageous to fight the good fight and come out with the crown.
If that sounds daunting and even impossible (I can't do it! I'm too weak! Too bad! I give up!), we should remember that any kid can do it. In fact, only a kid can do it- so we have to be little Children. It takes the faith of a child, the simplicity of a Child, the trust of a Child, the utter dependence of a Child. Jesus not only told us this in plain and direct terms- You must become like a child to enter the kingdom- but He demonstrated it for us by becoming himself a little child.
The event we celebrate this day runs counter to modern sensibilities- feast of the what? Some may ask. The Roman Catholics discarded it in their liturgical reforms as they got with the times- but we still celebrate, if with a wince, the circumcision of the God Child and Savior of the Human race Jesus Christ. This is in fact the Saviors first shedding of blood in his holy sacrifice for the remission of sins and our redemption from iniquity and the curse, punishment and death. How could we not stop and worship Him on this day?
He did not need to undergo the suffering and humiliation of circumcision for his own sake- He was the lawgiver he did not need to subject himself to the law. But we needed him to come to where we were and rescue us, and so ...when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Gal. 4:4-5
When we are enveloped by the power of God’s love in Christ, by what he has done for us, by our freedom and glory then all of the present sufferings will be as nothing to us. Sure, there are times to mourn and grieve in this life but it never eclipses the deep abiding presence of Joy and Peace because we know, we know deeply and feel the reality that this is all very temporary and will soon pass away as if it never existed and there will be only light and glory. A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being- a Man- has been born into the world.